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Thorgi Duke of Frisbee
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20 members have voted

  1. 1. Death Penalty

    • Yay
    • Nay
    • Case-by-case
    • I judge from afar in my death penalty-less country


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Alaska as underrated? I've lived there, and while the scenery is fantastic, you'll probably commit suicide if you don't live in the cities. When people say, "I'm so bored I could die," that's a thing in remote regions of the state.

 

I love Washington, and I want to live there again, but preferably the western half. When people were voting, they were probably thinking of that half of the state. The other half is similar to Idaho, which isn't exactly "beautiful." Though, when you head north, both states have nice forests which in my opinion trumph plains.

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  • 1 month later...

There's a statutory maximum to the amount of debt the US is allowed to accrue (debt ceiling).  Because we've been running giant deficits for the last long ass time Congress has to periodically increase the ceiling to allow the government to keep borrowing money to pay for all its shit.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives have refused to pass any debt ceiling increase unless it removes all federal funding from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  The Senate (mostly the Democrats but some Republicans too) have refused to pass any debt ceiling increase that does remove funding for Obamacare, and Obama has said he would veto it even if they did.  Because the same bill can't get past both houses the debt ceiling didn't get increased in time, so the federal government has hit the maximum amount of money it is allowed to borrow, so it can't make any more payments on anything until its authorized to borrow more money to do it.

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A US government default on its debt could likely crash the economy, as it would catastrophically devalue the safest investment out there, the US Treasury bond, precipitously and immediately. This is because the US could no longer guarantee the bonds, since it would no longer have the ability to pay them out. That's the rock-simple version, and the actual effects would be more complicated, but equally disastrous to the economy as well as to the functioning of the government at all. A debt limit breach would also precipitate a constitutional crisis as there are no recognized legal means of dealing with the fallout and Obama (or any president in his shoes) would likely try something like ordering the treasury to borrow anyway despite the House's orders.

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We're on day 4/5. Seems like we'll hit a week. Anyone want to bets when this shutdown will be resolved? An important date is Oct 14th 17th which is when the government will blow its payments. I don't see that happening so mucho grande reward for bets on/over the 14th 17th, with increasing payout with each passing day. Special weekly bonuses.

 

I wonder if this shutdown will effect how well I can get funding for grad school... hell, get into grad school. If I get no funding then there isn't much reason for me to be accepted.

Edited by MaliciousH
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Isn't it the 17th when they hit the ceiling?  

 

And I bet they'll drag this out up to that point, maybe even past it if Obama doesn't do something sneaky to get around the need for congressional approval.  The tea party would actually prefer a default over letting Obama have his way.  A few of their members have been quoted as such.

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Yeah, the ceiling is the 17th. I was confusing the ceiling with the shutdown. The shutdown is due to a provision in the last budget bill they passed, which said that if they couldn't reach an agreement of reducing spending by this month then there would be a shutdown of "nonessential" functions.

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It is, my bad. Edited.

 

I suppose I can deal with another 2008 scenario. Fresh out of a stage of my education and faced with crap. Maybe I should take a year off from school. Imagine being a grad student or a potential grad student in this mess? You could be in the middle of the project and boom, no funding.

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The shutdown, while certainly not helping anyone, is not all that bad in the long term.  A default, however, would be completely unprecedented in the entire history of the US.  Nobody can really say for sure what will happen if that comes to pass, which is why I think the House is so unflinching about the possibility.  "It can't be as bad as they say" is what they're telling themselves, and they seem 100% committed to this delusion.  I think anyone with half a brain could tell you that the United States not being able to pay its bills for the first time ever would be disastrous on a global scale, maybe even worse than what happened in 2008.  I can't say what will happen, but for fuck's sake we can't let ourselves find out.  Everyone gets that except for the suicide caucus, and nothing is ever going to change their minds about that. 

 

Mark my words, the only way we get out of this is by trickery or a loophole of some sort.  The tea party has never been reasonable before and they're not going to start now.

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Then you end up with the president doing the only thing he can reasonably do to prevent economic collapse, and that's paying the bills anyway. That, in turn, leads into a constitutional crisis since legally he doesn't have the authority to do that without Congress' OK.

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“I think we need to have that moment where we realize [we’re] going broke,” Yoho said. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, that will sure as heck be a moment. “I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets,” since they would be assured that the United States had moved decisively to curb its debt.
 
Great stuff, now, can we get some leading economists to go give their utterly uninformed opinions on how best to treat cattle for various ailments? 
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